One of the multiple threads on the forumsphere said that this was simply a program testing that its youtube-uploads were working well, by generating a random video and using image recognition to make sure it was the same one.

Makes sense, the videos are far too simple to contain embedded data, and if you wanted to pass hidden messages to someone through the internet I'm sure there are thousands of much more discreet ways.

One of the multiple threads on the forumsphere said that this was simply a program testing that its youtube-uploads were working well, by generating a random video and using image recognition to make sure it was the same one.

Makes sense, the videos are far too simple to contain embedded data, and if you wanted to pass hidden messages to someone through the internet I'm sure there are thousands of much more discreet ways.

This makes sense. WebDriver is an API for Selenium, the automated browser test framework.

Makes sense, the videos are far too simple to contain embedded data, and if you wanted to pass hidden messages to someone through the internet I'm sure there are thousands of much more discreet ways.

The videos don't have to contain that much data, if they're used in conjunction with one-time pads. The space of two rectangles of different colors placed in relation to one another is large enough to compare to the numbers used in a number station.

Makes sense, the videos are far too simple to contain embedded data, and if you wanted to pass hidden messages to someone through the internet I'm sure there are thousands of much more discreet ways.

The videos don't have to contain that much data, if they're used in conjunction with one-time pads. The space of two rectangles of different colors placed in relation to one another is large enough to compare to the numbers used in a number station.

Although, from a practical standpoint, using YouTube to communicate with spies would be kind of stupid.

Makes sense, the videos are far too simple to contain embedded data, and if you wanted to pass hidden messages to someone through the internet I'm sure there are thousands of much more discreet ways.

The videos don't have to contain that much data, if they're used in conjunction with one-time pads. The space of two rectangles of different colors placed in relation to one another is large enough to compare to the numbers used in a number station.

Although, from a practical standpoint, using YouTube to communicate with spies would be kind of stupid.

Although, from a practical standpoint, using YouTube to communicate with spies would be kind of stupid.

Why? How would $FOREIGN_GOVERNMENT figure out that the spy isn't just yet another moron laughing at stupid cat antics?

The two benefits of a number station setup is that it can be broadcast from a "safe" country, using short wave, to people listening in a hostile country, and it's really difficult to tell who received the message.

If a Western government was using this to communicate with spies in, say, China, that would be stupid. Internet access leaves a record and Chinese authorities could either block it outright, or more likely, track down the people who are watching these videos on a regular basis. "Well you could just connect via a VPN." If you can connect via uncrackable VPN then why are you doing by-hand cryptography in the first place?

Another big benefit of a number station is its low-tech: you just need a short wave radio (which can be small, battery-powered and easy to conceal), OTPs and paper and pencil. Using YouTube in this way would require a computer, as well as software that was able to read the data hidden in the videos. Then there's the question of decrypting the data: do you do it by computer, and risk having the keys exposed by a software flaw, or do you do it by-hand?

What if it's a foreign government sending this to spies in the West? Well, they're hosting it on YouTube AKA Google AKA the NSA's buttboy. If this was being used by spies then it would be trivially easy for a dozen Federal agencies to get ahold of records of IPs that regularly viewed the videos.

That said, I still think this is probably a prank or automated testing gone awry. Or it could even be deliberate automated testing.

That might be viable if the message was encoded in a video of stupid cat antics; but less viable is "I like to watch multicolored rectangles move around very precise coordinates."

OMG, they should hide spy messages in porns. Think about:

Porn is already pretty weird, and people aren't going to notice, say, an abstract art poster of a series of numbers in the background.

People watch billions of hours of porn a day, so it would be incredibly hard to find the one person who was watching it for secret messages versus the 9 million people watching it for other reasons.

Porn is usually shot on crappy digital camcorders and nobody's going to think "Wow, the production values are really low."

Porns draw from the same pool of "talent", so who would be suspicious of the same people showing up in your videos? Means you can keep your spy ring small and not attract attention.

It's self-mirroring. That also aids in making it hard to track down your spies receiving the messages. All they have to do is Google a particular video and they'll have hundreds of sites to choose from.

Porn is shady and low-rent anyway, so a bunch of shady-ass spies won't stand out. And you can always just hire people off the street to act for you. Once again, that's par for the course in the porn industry. If you went up to women on the street offering them $5k to read numbers in a monotone voice into a tape recorder, you'll probably be in Gitmo by sun-down. Offer them $5k for an anal scene and they'll gladly accept.

That might be viable if the message was encoded in a video of stupid cat antics; but less viable is "I like to watch multicolored rectangles move around very precise coordinates."

OMG, they should hide spy messages in porns. Think about:

Porn is already pretty weird, and people aren't going to notice, say, an abstract art poster of a series of numbers in the background.

People watch billions of hours of porn a day, so it would be incredibly hard to find the one person who was watching it for secret messages versus the 9 million people watching it for other reasons.

Porn is usually shot on crappy digital camcorders and nobody's going to think "Wow, the production values are really low."

Porns draw from the same pool of "talent", so who would be suspicious of the same people showing up in your videos? Means you can keep your spy ring small and not attract attention.

It's self-mirroring. That also aids in making it hard to track down your spies receiving the messages. All they have to do is Google a particular video and they'll have hundreds of sites to choose from.

Porn is shady and low-rent anyway, so a bunch of shady-ass spies won't stand out. And you can always just hire people off the street to act for you. Once again, that's par for the course in the porn industry. If you went up to women on the street offering them $5k to read numbers in a monotone voice into a tape recorder, you'll probably be in Gitmo by sun-down. Offer them $5k for an anal scene and they'll gladly accept.

The gubmint could actually make some profit while doing it. Also, you don't need weird posters in the background, just set or unset the low green bit of every prime numbered pixel in every 12th frame or something. Video has the benefit of having TONS of worthless extra data, so it would quickly become unfeasible to search every pixel of every frame for a bit pattern (and there shouldn't be a pattern, because it should be encrypted first so that it just looks like noise).

Also, you don't need weird posters in the background, just set or unset the low green bit of every prime numbered pixel in every 12th frame or something. Video has the benefit of having TONS of worthless extra data, so it would quickly become unfeasible to search every pixel of every frame for a bit pattern (and there shouldn't be a pattern, because it should be encrypted first so that it just looks like noise).

Yeah, that would make the "mirroring" thing kind of difficult. The neat thing about the posters is it will stand up well to transcoding and lossy quality while still hiding in plain sight. It also doesn't require any fancy video file manipulation, just some crayons.

And there are a hundred ways you could hide messages. Like, maybe you meticulously cut holes in the fishnet stockings to represent bits. Or, like, the dialog is always nonsense, so maybe you come up with a base-4 coding system that uses "Oh yes", "Oh God", "Harder" and "Right there" to represent data. I mean, the possibilities are endless.